Mark Kelly’s Bad Labor Record

I am by no means saying this is dispositive when it comes to the VP selection. After all, the VP is important but not that important and each of the possible candidates bring something to the table, including Mark Kelly. But it is also worth noting that Kelly is extremely weak on labor issues. John Nichols with a good run-down on this.

The next big test for Harris will be her selection of a vice-presidential running-mate. Most of the potential picks are labor stalwarts. But one possible VP pick, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, has a record that has raised concerns among union leaders and members. Of particular concern has been Kelly’s reluctance—until very recently—to embrace labor’s top legislative priority, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. 

After the Democrats took charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress in January 2021, lawmakers introduced the PRO Act in an effort to expand union power. The measure is a sweeping plan to remove barriers to organizing workplaces across the country, and to make it possible for labor and national unions to bargain equitable contracts. The AFL-CIO describes the PRO Act, which is ardently backed by union activists and by Biden and Harris, as “the most significant worker empowerment legislation since the Great Depression.” Predictably, it is opposed by corporate interests and their congressional allies.

In March 2021, the PRO Act passed the House with bipartisan support, in a 225-206 vote that then-AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka described as “a game-changer”  for working Americans. “If you really want to correct inequality in this country — wages and wealth inequality, opportunity and inequality of power — passing the PRO Act is absolutely essential to doing that,” said Trumka in 2021, when he urged the Senate, where Democrats had a narrow advantage, to advance the legislation to President Biden’s desk.

The Senate failed to do so because, in addition to overwhelming Republican opposition, a handful of Senate Democratic Caucus members were reluctant to sign on for the measure, including West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, Maine’s Angus King, Virginia’s Mark Warner, and the two senators from Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema and Kelly. In the face a major campaign led by the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) and other unions, Manchin and King joined the vast majority of Senate Democrats as co-sponsors in April 2021, bringing the number of co-sponsors to 47. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber would bring the measure to a vote if 50 Democrats agreed to co-sponsor it. Strategizing began for efforts to break an anticipated Republican filibuster in order to pass the bill.

Kelly was seen as the key senator to make it all happen. If he moved, the argument went, Sinema could be convinced to do the same. And if they both signed on, a massive AFL-CIO push was planned in order to get Warner on board. But Kelly never moved, assuring that the measure would, in the words of the Revolving Door Project “stagnate in the Senate.” 

After Trumka’s death in the summer of 2021, the legislation was renamed in the longtime AFL-CIO leader’s honor. But still it was stalled, through the 117th Congress and into the 118th. Henry Burke, a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, noted last month, just two days after Biden decided to stand down as the Democratic candidate for president and hand the mantle to Harris, “While Kelly has hinted that he may be open to considering some provisions of the PRO Act, two years later, he remains one of only two Senate Democrats not cosponsoring the legislation.”

Now, I don’t believe Democrats would have blown up the filibuster to pass the PRO Act. But this is not the only sign of Kelly’s weakness on labor issues.

Yet, as the Revolving Door Project’s Burke has noted:

Kelly’s opposition to the PRO Act is not the only instance of his intransigence on labor issues. In 2022, Kelly joined Sinema and Manchin to hand the Biden administration a surprise defeat in the Senate on a nominee to lead the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. The move was the first time that a Biden nominee had lost a Senate floor vote, surprising both the administration and Senate leadership. The nominee, David Weil, had previously served as the head of Wage and Hour under the Obama administration, so was widely considered to be highly qualified to retake the post. But Kelly, Sinema and Manchin voted against him, with Kelly openly stating that his opposition was motivated by the decisions Weil had made under the Obama administration. These decisions included extending overtime to more American workers, increasing the number of employers considered to be joint employers (and thus undermining a loophole enabling powerful corporations to avoid legal accountability for their labor practices), and limiting the ability of firms to label employees as “independent contractors.” These decisions were extremely unpopular with business groups, with those in the gig economy and restaurant industries among those most affected by joint employer rules and the limiting of independent contracting.

So it’s concerning. Kelly does bring a lot to the table, in terms of being in a key swing state and being ferociously anti-gun, with his family story to go with it, which is good for the politics of his choice. Do I think there are better options? Yes. But I also don’t think Kelly is an idiot. He has now come out and said he supports the PRO Act, which is cynical on his part but I don’t care about cynicism. I care that Democrats know they have to support labor rights to be serious contenders for the top slots. He won’t buck the party on the issue. So if it is him, fine.